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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

I haven't played any Chopin etudes, but my understanding was that they are mostly quite hard. In my mind, it's not strange at all to take a several days to learn a section to tempo, beginning at a slow pace. You're probably the best judge of if it's too hard for you, but I'd say that if you feel like you're learning from it, your wrists aren't burning, and you're entertained while playing it, it's worth spending time on. Especially if it's a beautiful piece that you'd love to play well. Could you learn something shorter and easier concurrently? It might make you less likely to get burnt out.

I think spending a bit of time learning a piece is often what's needed to do justice to it and play it nicely. Cheers to hard work and due diligence.

I haven't played any Chopin etudes, but my understanding was that they are mostly quite hard.

Some of the world's great pianists didn't dare to play some of them in public, is how hard they are.

Getting down to the level of people who aren't among the world's greatest pianists, like myself and presumably the OP, most of these etudes are just ridiculous to attempt before reaching a very advanced general technical level, IMO. But that shouldn't stop a person from working on them, if it is fully understood that the chances are quite high that they will not be mastered.

I've worked on the one in question, op. 10/1, on and off for around 40 years, and still can't play it reliably at half tempo, just as an example (that 20-30 years as I mentioned in an earlier post wasn't facetious). But I think I've learned a lot from flailing and failing at it, not least of which is that what it initially seems to be about is not what it is really about.